


How Long the Orbital Night

by the_glow_worm



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, M/M, Sci-Fi Elements, Treat, courting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-28 10:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20424713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: Napoleon, sole emperor of innumerable planets and star systems, had every intention of rebuking the young captain who stole away his prime dreadnought. But then he saw William Laurence's face...





	How Long the Orbital Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychomachia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/gifts).

The dreadnought had been awaited these seventy years and more. They were not to be hurried from the Unknown from which they were made; they were planet-killers, galaxy-conquerors, and their making could not be set to any mortal schedule, not even if that mortal was an emperor of ten thousand planets, and the absolute head of an empire the likes of which had not been seen since the destruction of Earth. _He_ could only have patience.

Napoleon Bonaparte was perturbed therefore to open the missive that came to him—on old-fashioned electronic paper, no less—explaining the appalling circumstances under which his dreadnought had been delayed, and what had come of the delay. He sat very still, reading it over again, and then standing upright cast it away violently. The eidolons that tended to his needs sensed his rage: far away, in a different wing of the palace, the handlers that gave them propulsion and life withdrew their attention, leaving the shadows to fade slowly away. He paced around the room, livid. Seventy years waiting for the crowning glory of his fleet—the ship that would carry him into the field, that would destroy cruisers and continents on his barest thought, his personal weapon, the extension of himself—seventy years gone, wasted! Precious few things in his office had physical form and weight: they were all seized and destroyed in a moment. The detritus of several priceless artifacts, some of them the last remnants of worlds that had defied him, shortly littered his feet. Napoleon threw himself into his chair, breathing heavily, and called up the letter again in his mind's eye.

The dreadnought had been wounded, the letter explained, although the uncultured council that had sent it had called it something else. Some freak meteor, coinciding exactly with the place and time that the dreadnought had passed between the Unknown and the Known, had struck it during its only point of weakness. It had gone to rest on the nearest planet, where the commander of their orbital station had helped to heal it—and appallingly, imprinted with it. He had named it Temeraire.

Napoleon had to struggle not to give in to rage again when he read that. To think that the lead ruffian of a jumped-up guard outpost should possess his dreadnought was nearly unbearable, but the habit of calm, cold calculation was deeply embedded within him. The letter had gone on at length after that, in a very pleading fashion, assuring His Majesty that they had intended no offense, that they did not mean to keep anything meant for the Emperor's hand—the Emperor, who they respected greatly and hoped to ever have cordial relations with—and that Captain Laurence and the dreadnought would be sent over to him at once, to be delivered into his service, and that the Anglic Council hoped that His Majesty thought in a good light of Anglia, which had ever done him honor.

He chose to skip the rest of the begging, dismissing the letter from his mind's eye. Anglia--he had heard the name before, but not often. Some backwater planet, ostensibly neutral, but that due more to their scarcity of vital resources and lack of strategic importance than a true ability to defend their neutrality. A dreadnought, for all its power, could only draw unwanted attention down upon them, and so they had sent this half-trained soldier to him as an offering.

Well, Napoleon was not wholly unsympathetic. He was himself from an unfashionable planet, although Corsacan had always been more battlefield than backwater. Anglia, however, looked quite different from his home: he studied the images in his mind's eye with great interest. A pastoral landscape, much like the ones his court tried to imitate on their pleasure planets, but without the sticky aura of money and fakery. The wind blew back the long swaying grass, revealing ewes with unsteady lambs at their side, and the light trickle of water laughing as it went down into a valley. A true idyll. According to his eye there were several cities on the main continent, none of them very large, and their technology was charmingly rustic—still relying on electricity, for one thing. Rising up out of the image he saw that the planet was covered mainly in seas as temperamental as the land was placid: the surface must have been a hundred parts salt water to one part solid land.

Napoleon rather liked it. The planet must be punished, of course, for having interfered with his dreadnought, but he thought he might spare some part of it to keep as a vacation home.

* * *

Resolution allowed him to keep his temper; the thought of his coming revenge cooled him and even filled him with a kind of mild regret. It had been a beautiful planet. Alas that he could not spare it entirely; Napoleon knew well that his pride would accept no substitution.

Resolution held firm, resolution carried him through the day, while anger at the loss of his priceless dreadnought buzzed at the back of his mind, resolution was all, until the dreadnought landed on his palace roof and the man who had captured it was brought in to see him; and then resolution quite fell apart.

William Laurence bowed, straightened, and looking into his face without any fear at all said,

"Your Majesty. I am Captain Will Laurence of the Anglic Orbital Forces; I am very honored to be in your imperial presence. Forty seven Gallic standard hours ago I provided assistance in response to a distress signal near to our third moon, and there encountered the dreadnought; I believe the Anglic Council has informed your Majesty how I there came to imprint him, and it remains only to me to affirm my intention to serve to the best of my ability, in order to recompense for some of the trespass that I unwilling and unknowing committed against the throne."

He bowed again, waiting for his answer. Napoleon could only sit back and look at him, quite stunned. Someone had taught him to speak Gallic, and speak it well, although he had spoken the word dreadnought with hesitation; he had wanted to use the word the Anglic council had used, which was _dragon_. He was, besides this, gorgeous. Napoleon had rarely seen a better, not even amongst his most well-designed courtiers. Broad shoulders, a tall frame, a very beautiful face ennobled by the steadfastness of his gaze.

There was no more question of revenge or punishment at all. Napoleon leapt out of his throne to come down to greet him.

"Come, come, what is this talk of recompense?" he cried, kissing him twice on each cheek. Napoleon could feel the hard swell of the muscles beneath his hands where he had grasped him. "Your request to serve is accepted, of course—nothing could bring me greater pleasure! To offer a place by my side to the man who has rescued my precious dreadnought! Now come, and sit by me, and we will talk. I long to know everything about you, my new dearest friend."

The conversation that followed was a delight from beginning to end. They had settled themselves by the great viewing window in his throne room; the palace was currently in orbit around a moon perpetually covered in roiling red storms, and the view felt appropriate for the occasion. Napoleon felt thunderstruck, himself. Only a little questioning was necessary to reveal that the Anglic Council had not ordered Laurence anywhere; Laurence, out of some charming sense of honor, had insisted that he go to Napoleon’s side. Napoleon was delighted; it was as if a rich and proud star system had surrendered to him without a fight, or some delectable morsel had jumped up before him and begged to be eaten. Napoleon, looking at him, was happy to oblige, and immediately he asked a great many more questions.

Captain Laurence was a little hesitant in the beginning, with a natural modesty that was very becoming to see, and would have demurred entirely from answering Napoleon at all.

“What, are you afraid of me?” he asked half-jokingly, when Laurence had maintained his silence. “Do I seem terrible to you? I found _you_ exceedingly handsome, and I wished to compliment you!”

This flustered Laurence, unfortunately; he hesitated, and there was a look of great confusion on his face. After a moment he managed to say, steadily,

“I am sure I have nothing to fear from Your Majesty.”

“Then you can have no reluctance to tell me of your life. I wish you to have utter confidence in me.”

But Laurence still did not speak, and might yet not have for the duration of the visit had not Napoleon, thinking quickly, began to speak at length of Anglia, and her great natural charm, which he had seen in images transmitted from his scouts, which traveled invisibly through the atmosphere and saw everything that happened there. It had been a very long time indeed since he had visited any planet except to conquer it, or to destroy it, but he longed to see the captain's birthplace; the letter he had received, and the knowledge that his dreadnought had been rescued there, had filled him with a very great desire, and it would after all be a waste to conquer or destroy any part of such a beautiful landscape. Then Captain Laurence, after a pause, began at last to speak more quickly, indeed almost too quickly, in order to thank him for the honor His Majesty did to them. Anglia had nothing to offer the Emperor, however, and he hoped that His Majesty believed that he, William Laurence, was happy to serve however His Majesty desired.

Napoleon very much admired the points of color high in his cheek.

"Tell me," he said encouragingly, "have you any family of your own? You have never married?"

"No, sire," said Laurence, not reticent about his answers any longer. "I have neither wife nor husband."

"Ah! So there is no one to miss you on Anglia. What fine news; I intend to have you engaged in my service for a very long time. You will be raised to a position of the highest honor in my court, and be ever by my side; we shall be as close as left hand is to right," and so saying intertwined his fingers together, squeezing.

"Your Majesty is too kind," said Laurence. "I need only your orders to direct me."

"Orders! Let us not speak of orders, as though I should ever issue any to you. I can only take from you what you offer freely. Now, what can the Gallic Empire give to you for such service? You shall have wealth beyond measure, of course—that is a trifle to me! A man who commands a dreadnought can not want more power. Perhaps there are places you long to go to? Shall we not go together to my pleasure planets, jewels of my empire, and enjoy the sights that no one but you and I are permitted to see? I have some bagatelles it may amuse you to possess, artifacts from the old religions of Earth, trinkets from the great gem-workers of Anazarion star cluster—Well? What is it that you desire? What honors will you take from me?"

But Laurence would take none, to Napoleon’s great dismay, nor any of the other lures he was used to casting. In the end Napoleon, for all his persuasive skill, could only commit him to taking a modest room, which the palace created for him before he had finished speaking. Laurence’s reluctance had not harmed Napoleon’s admiration of him however, and he stood looking at him with pleasure long after he was gone.

He had been looking for a consort even longer than he had been waiting for his dreadnought. He had courted a dozen candidates over the years, and even married a few. He still thought of them with fond nostalgia; especially Josephine, sophisticated, temperamental Josephine, who had left him to live on the garden worlds he had given her, which she filled with alien blossoms and handsome young lovers. But he had not found what he had termed, romantically, the one: Josephine incapable of fidelity, Michel-Louis jealous as a cat over his own affairs, Eleon and Duchatel and Pellapra incapable of holding his attention for long. But this one—this William Laurence, a foreigner to the Gallic Empire—

Alone now, he called up the image of him in his mind's eye. Laurence had no eye himself—no augments at all, which lent him a certain rustic charm—and had no defense against the swift and efficient probes that told Napoleon everything there was to know about Will Laurence.

Excellent physical health, no genetic abnormalities. The medal on his shoulder, which Napoleon had noticed before for being rather small and dingy, was in fact Anglia’s highest honor, an award for extraordinary courage that was only bestowed once in a generation. He had received top honors at the Anglic Military Academy, admiration from his peers, reverence from his crewmen. Secret communiques between Anglic admirals revealed that he was being groomed for Star Command, and perhaps even a Council chair. Now Napoleon meant him for much greater things.

His eye could also reveal what lay beneath Laurence's uniform, if he wished it. He could watch each layer peel back one by one until there was only Laurence, flushed and naked before him. He could make Laurence look any way he wanted, in the privacy of his mind's eye, could make him do anything he wanted. The temptation was very hard to resist, but no. He was determined that one day soon, Laurence would show it all to him of his own accord.

* * *

Nothing could be too extravagant for William Laurence. He was given the largest bedroom, conjured out of the palace only for him, situated directly next to the emperor's suite. Napoleon thought with pleasure of the night that their two quarters would become one; the wall between them was thin, and he had only to will it to open a door. But that, too, would wait until Laurence himself asked for it. The eidolons disturbed Laurence, and so flesh and blood servants had been hired for him from the nearest moon. It was an enormous expenditure to find people who would do an eidolon's work, but Napoleon did not complain of the cost. He had given Laurence many things that dwarfed it; dinner every night, for example, prepared by human cooks and served by human waiters as Laurence seemed to prefer, with every cut of meat and every strange fruit imported from a different planet and ruthlessly culled for perfection.

Napoleon had flattered himself for a while that it was working. Laurence was developing into an excellent dinner companion at least, although he had a tendency towards uncomfortable silence whenever Napoleon raised the topic of love—sincerely aggravating, as that was one topic that Napoleon could speak on for hours, and did, often. Looking into his eye, later, he found that Anglia was intolerably dull when it came to romance and sex: the topics were almost completely taboo.

Napoleon, who preferred the most direct approach at all times, was nearly driven into despair by that revelation. It certainly explained the notes he had sent—_I see but you. I admire but you. I desire but you. Answer at once to calm my impatient ardor!_—that were returned without answer. The two marriage proposals he had not been able to restrain himself from making were answered with similar silence. On Anglia, marriage was not even to be considered until the two participants had known each other for some years; Napoleon, although only entering into his second century of life, could not bear to wait so long.

Progress now seemed unbearably slow. On impulse Napoleon presented him with a planet, Nyohetes So, a jewel of a water world where a strange seaweed grew that would give anyone who devoured it a beautiful voice for thirteen hours; it was much in demand at his court, and the planet's surface was now given over entirely to its cultivation. Laurence flushed and turned pale in quick succession, and in a choked, struggling voice said,

"In all honor I cannot refuse your gift, Majesty; I hope to be worthy of it."

Charmed by this reaction, Napoleon gave him two dozen more planets in quick succession, along with their various systems and moons. Daily missives came back from his armadas in the field, travelling daily over thousands of years, informing him of his new conquests, and he plotted which he should present to Laurence in turn. 

A week later, unable to resist inquiring, he found that Laurence had promptly given each of his planets self-rule and ended their mandatory tithe of goods. Napoleon was equal parts vexed and delighted. None of his previous conquests had been so wonderfully contrary, or indeed, so difficult to conquer; the chase was exhilarating to him. On the other hand, this was not at all how he intended to run his empire.

He resorted to other means of seduction. He even, in desperation, turned to adenoidal implants; a trick he would normally disdain to stoop to, but no one had eluded him like Will Laurence. The pheromones they created were, according to the court perfumier, irresistible; but although some of the waiters at dinner quite literally threw themselves at Napoleon's feet, Laurence proved himself most capable of resisting them.

Napoleon had exhausted every stratagem he could think of, and despite this Laurence remained very polite: nothing less and nothing more. He came and went where the Emperor willed it, joined him without complaint for dinners and operas and supernova viewings, and once, in a particularly desperate ploy, dancing lessons. In conversation he was deferential without seeming too eager to please, firm in his opinion without acting contentious, dryly amusing without being crass. But although he spoke like a courtier, obeyed like a soldier, and danced like a solar wind, Laurence still was not in Napoleon’s bed.

Finally, at a loss, Napoleon went up to the palace roof to have some conversation with Temeraire. 

The dreadnought had not moved since the day of landing, except to turn its head from time to time, presumably to improve its view through the tensor field of atmosphere that enveloped the palace-world. Only Laurence went up to the palace roof anymore; everyone else gave it a wide and wary berth. It lay coiled, recumbent, the flanges that so resembled wings tucked into its side, the exterior plated in material that was dark as a black hole is dark. Only his eyes, or what so closely resembled eyes, reflected light. They looked at Napoleon as he stood before it.

"Yes, yes, your problem is very obvious,” said Temeraire, before Napoleon had a chance to speak. “I have been watching your Fourth Armada, you know, and they’re bound to get rolled up if they let themselves give battle around that hydrogen planet. You had better order them to attack the xanthic moon directly; I do not think much of this Davout fellow you have there.” It tilted his head, while Napoleon digested this intelligence; he had indeed received a missive from Davout two hours ago announcing his intention to circle around the gas giant in the Saphego system, but that battle was operating most of a galaxy away. The dreadnought must have astonishing sensory capacity. Thoughtfully Temeraire added, “Also, you are trying to bed Laurence, and he won’t have you.”

“You are admirably direct! But I do not intend merely to bed him, but ultimately to take him as my consort, to be the jewel of my empire, to rule what I rule.”

"Then it was not very wise for you to threaten his home planet when you first met him," said Temeraire to him reproachfully. "But I suppose you _have_ made up for it by giving him those slave worlds to free; in any case I have no argument with your goal, if you _are_ telling the truth. I see no reason why he should not be consort, at all, certainly Laurence deserves it."

"Dear creature, that is exactly how I feel," said Napoleon with energy. “Only I cannot work out how I it should be done.”

“I beg your pardon, but I was led to believe that you are considered competent, was I mistaken?” questioned Temeraire. “Were you not aware that the Hapsbt Mind is certainly planning to attack Anglia, and soon? No, I certainly won’t pretend to speak for the Mind,” he said with asperity, in reply to Napoleon’s questions. “Who could guess what might motivate _them_? But their intentions are perfectly obvious, and so is your solution. Marshall Ney is only a few hundred years or so from the Anglic system, and has nothing very much better to do.”

Marshall Ney was currently deployed in gently quashing a small, indulgent rebellion by one of Napoleon’s brothers, so Napoleon could not honestly find much to debate in this. He immediately sent off a message by personal ansible, and within a second received a reply: the fleet was redeploying to take up defensive positions around Anglia, and would arrive within a day. Napoleon suspected that Ney had been rather bored toying with Jerome.

Napoleon left it at that. He and his Marshalls had smashed the AI generals of the Hapsbt Mind at every arena, and he wasn’t particularly worried about this one.

“Should you and I not join the armada in the field?” he asked.

“Oh no,” said Temeraire complacently. “I am going nowhere without Laurence, and better for your purposes that he had find out about the battle after it’s been won. And better that you stay here and be ready to play the hero.” The dreadnought peered at him. “You _can_ do that, I suppose?”

“Better than anyone,” Napoleon assured him.

Temeraire made a doubtful noise—Napoleon hadn’t known dreadnoughts _could_ be doubtful—and said,

“Well, I suppose he can divorce you, if he likes, and if you should break his heart, I shall unmake your empire. So I’ll have to be satisfied with that.”

Napoleon, too, was satisfied, and more so three days later, when word of their rescue had apparently come from Anglia. Laurence bowed over his hand, deeply, at dinner, and with the fervent passion of a patriot said,

“What can I do, your Majesty, to thank you for the rescue of my home-world? I fear I owe you a debt of honor that can never be repaid.”

“Dear William! What can I ask from you but what I have asked for all this time; a little bit of your love, and your hand? Perhaps you do not know me as I would like, but it takes only a minute to fall in love.”

“Your Majesty,” said Laurence, clearly a little reluctant. “If that is what you desire, on behalf of my world, I cannot say no,” and then, right there at the dinner table, he proposed.

It was swiftly accepted, and the rites as swiftly performed; Napoleon was wed to a bewildered Laurence before the hour was out.

It occurred to him belatedly that there had been perhaps a little trickery in the affair. Well—Napoleon shrugged philosophically. The bed had already been made, and he intended to have Laurence on it. He was sure Laurence would have no complaints of the outcome, shortly, and at that thought he opened the door and let Laurence into the bedchamber, and then made him take off his clothes, layer by layer.

Napoleon thought with satisfaction that he had been quite right to resist temptation; the sight was well worth the wait, despite the trouble he had gone to in order to get it—and Laurence was, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Napoleon's pursuit of Laurence is loosely, very loosely, based on his historical courtship of Countess Marie Walewska. Additionally, some of Napoleon's best lines in this are lifted directly from his personal notes and the memoirs of his mistresses. History is truly better than fiction.


End file.
